Posts Tagged ‘$2 million’

Obama is giving Spanish-owned companies “shovel-ready jobs. But they’re GREEN shovel-ready jobs. So apparently it’s okay if those jobs only cost the American taxpayers – well, make that the Obama administration and his massive government bureaucracy borrowing from China so that American taxpayers have to pay principal plus interest – more than two million dollars per job.

If you drew a straight line between the Obama White House, Harvard and Martha’s Vineyard, you’d apparently find no real economists judging by the effluvia created through progressive economics in this country.

But would it be too much to ask if we could have a few people who could just add, subtract, multiply and divide? What exactly is an Ivy League degree worth if you can’t do lower mathematics?

I guess a lot less than Sarah Palin and a University of Idaho bachelor’s degree is worth.

In a quest for a few more “green” jobs that the administration can brag about, the Department of Energy recently announced that they have awarded a Spanish company, Abegnoa Bioenergy, $134 million in loan guarantees for an experimental biomass plant that will create- count ‘em- only 65 “permanent” jobs in Kansas.

Say what you want but Palin’s career shows she knows how to divide 65 jobs into $134 million. That skill apparently is beyond the ken of the Hallowed-Halls-of-Harvard-and-Princeton crowd. But it certainly seems like a valuable skill for a president to have.

$134,000,000 /65= $2,061,538.46 per job.

With these kinds of economies of scale, it would make more sense for the administration to make 65 people multimillionaires outright with that money. Just think: 65 more people they could tax at a higher rate.

What’s more fair than that? I mean besides not taxing everyone out of business. But, since that’s not an option….

Oh, I forgot. That makes too much sense for a liberal. They don’t like millionaires.

They only like Brazilian, Spanish and progressive billionaires.

“This project is part of the Administration’s commitment to expand our advanced domestic biofuels industry,” said Energy Secretary Chu according to BrightEnergy.org. “Investments like these will create jobs and decrease the nation’s dependency on oil by using a sustainable, home-grown transportation fuel that will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Not likely.

What it will do is help a company with $5.5 billion dollars cash in the bank, owned by Spanish millionaires and billionaires, keep $134 million in the bank. Abegnoa can then use that money in real projects that require, um, what’s technically known as a “return on investment” (ROI) to be successful. ROI is generally considered to be a good thing in the investment business if you’d like to prevent criminal proceedings. Or alternately, if you can’t produce return on investment, you can try for a government guarantee.

Obama likes to talk about investing in education, infrastructure, whatever, but if Obama were in charge of your 401k, at retirement you’d not only be broke, but you’d owe a few million. Oops, looks like Mr. Investment put some money into education and infrastructure development that wasn’t just quite as shovel ready as he thought.

That will go down so well at the retirement home when it’s time to take your medicine and eat your peas.

The problem is that Washington types have been making promises about biomass biofuels for decades now without any real progress- biomass is not shovel ready in other words, unlike the real energy projects proposed by outside Washington types, like- oh, I don’t know- Sarah Palin.

In short, biomass takes feedstock like corn leaves, wood pulp or municipal waste and turns it into a liquid fuel like ethanol or a gas, like hydrogen. It’s kind of a way of speeding up the millions-of-years process that made fossil fuels.

The clean energy crowd in DC has promised for two decades that biofuels will help break dependence on foreign sources of oil, but they always have to dial back their predictions, says Gigaom.com, a technology website and consultancy that produces green IT research.

“Originally in 2010,” writes Gigaom “the EPA estimated the industry could produce 100 million gallons, but basically it turned out to be zero. For 2011, five companies were estimated to be able to produce about 6 million cellulosic ethanol-equivalent gallons and it’s unclear if they are going to make that estimate.”

Oh, but wait, it’s worse.

“For 2012,” says Gigaom, “the EPA previously estimated that the cellulosic ethanol industry would have a capacity to be able to produce 500 million gallons. But in June the EPA quietly proposed to reduce that volume estimate to 3.5 million to 15.7 million.”

Sounds like the same government guys who estimate jobs creation for the Bureau of Labor Statistics moonlight at the EPA.

So much for the DOE’s investment in Abegnoa, a publicly-traded company with almost $9 billion dollars in sales and 26,128 employees not counting the 65 soon-to-be-hirelings in Kansas.

So much for 65 permanent jobs in Kansas. In the meantime 20,000 real energy jobs Palin created with the Nat Gas pipeline in Alaska are being held hostage to a presidential permit that Obama hasn’t signed in two-and-a-half years.

If the biomass plant made any sense at all economically the company would be able to get a loan on the strength of its balance sheet, rather than having to rely on guarantees from the Department of Energy. Because in the end, this plant won’t make money, won’t make the rent and certainly won’t make enough “green” fuel to power Kyle Orton’s Prius for a week.

WASHINGTON – August 24 – Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today called upon General Electric’s Chairman and CEO, Jeffrey Immelt to resign from his position as head of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Kucinich’s statement came in response to news reports that, in exchange for short-term profit, GE is sending advanced technology to China that was originally created by NASA.

“If he does not resign, the White House should remove him,” Kucinich said.

“As 14 million Americans struggle with unemployment, General Electric, under Mr. Immelt’s leadership, is exporting highly-sophisticated technology to the Chinese in order to book short-term profits for GE. GE strives mightily to avoid paying federal income taxes, but goes ‘all in’ on a deal to transfer U.S. government-subsidized technology to the Chinese. Jeffrey Immelt has a conflict of interest. He cannot ethically advise the President on how to create American jobs and promote American competiveness, while at the same time leading a company that is exporting American technology and, along with it, American jobs,” said Kucinich.

A report in Monday’s Washington Post described the transfer of a virtual reality display system for airplane cockpits that GE is transferring to the Chinese as part of its joint venture with a Chinese state-owned company. The display system GE is transferring was originally developed using Synthetic Vision technology created by NASA in partnership with private industry. NASA has committed millions of dollars to pursue development of synthetic vision systems.

Kucinich added, “American taxpayers subsidized the development of this advanced technology, but U.S. taxpayers’ investment will end up creating jobs in China. In the short term, GE is selling products to the Chinese, which will help GE’s bottom line. In the long term, the Chinese will end up manufacturing and selling products using the same technologies that were made in America.”

“The United States has long been the leader in aerospace development and manufacturing. We have the best-trained, most skilled workers which give American-made aerospace products a natural competitive advantage. How can Mr. Immelt be the head of the President’s ‘Jobs and Competiveness Council’ while undermining the United State’s advantage in aerospace?” asked Kucinich. “In light of these revelations, Mr. Immelt should save the President the embarrassment of asking him to step down and voluntarily resign.”

A Michigan man who won $2 million in a state lottery game continues to collect food stamps 11 months after striking it rich.

And there’s nothing the state can do about it, at least for now.

Leroy Fick, 59, of Auburn won $2 million in the state lottery TV show “Make Me Rich!” last June. But the state’s Department of Human Services determined he was still eligible for food stamps, Fick’s attorney, John Wilson of Midland, said Tuesday.

Eligibility for food stamps is based on gross income and follows federal guidelines; lottery winnings are considered liquid assets and don’t count as income. As long as Fick’s gross income stays below the eligibility requirement for food stamps, he can receive them, even if he has a million dollars in the bank.

Food stamps are paid for through tax dollars and are meant to help support low-income families.

“If you’re going to try to make me feel bad, you’re not going to do it,” Fick told WNEM-TV in Saginaw on Monday.

Wilson said Fick told the DHS officials he’d won $2 million but was told he could keep using the Bridge Card issued to him to buy groceries.

The story: Stanley Thornton Jr., 30, is a self-described “adult baby,” who sleeps in a huge crib, drinks from a bottle, wears diapers, lives with a former nurse who acts as his “mom”… and subsists on Social Security disability benefits. This last part caught the attention of Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who requested that the Social Security inspector general review Thornton’s disability classification — especially since Thornton appears to be running a design business specializing in “adult baby” furniture. Thornton, who was featured on the National Geographic TV show Taboo (see video below), says he has mental problems that prevent him from holding a job, and threatened to kill himself if his Social Security check is taken away.

The reaction: The only thing standing between Thornton and a job is his fantasies, so kick this 350-pound “diaper wearing freeloader” off the dole, says Christian Adams in Pajamas Media. Seriously, could there be “a better symbol of what a fiscal mess we are in”? Well, yes and no, says Allahpundit in Hot Air. I mean, watch the video. “If this guy’s not ‘disabled,’ who is?” And it’s not like he’s the only American putting his needs before our “crushing debt burden.” The saddest thing about this story, says Dan Amira in New York, is who would’ve thought “a fight between a United States Senator and a 30-year-old adult baby could be unfunny”?

Question: Did someone just make a doody in their diaper???

Conclusion: how DARE you question these noble liberal programs!?!?!? You must be totally heartless!!!!!

Democrats have made it as impossible to stop fraud in these programs as they have made it impossible to deal with voter fraud or illegal immigration.

Republicans could try to investigate how these programs are godawfully abused, but of course liberals and Democrats would start running ads like this one.

All scaremongering and demonizing aside, let me tell you the truth. Democrats don’t want to push “gramma” off the cliff. They’re FAR too hateful and depraved for something so small in scale. Rather, Democrats want to push the entire United States of America off a cliff. They want every single American to perish in the horror of a Great Depression that will make the last one seem like a pleasant afternoon at the beach. They want to attack everyone who proposes any kind of solution to our impending 100%-guaranteed-to-happen financial implosion so that our nation and every single person living in it has the choice between communism or death.

You’ve got the media-as-ostrich, burying its head in the sand lest it see something that would embarrass the left. You’ve got “OBAMACORN” and a clever symbol depicting the truth that ACORN is Obama and Obama is ACORN. And you’ve got the story of the anchor of one of the big three news channels saying he absolutely doesn’t have a clue about what is going on.

Don: Okay, here’s my news question. A Senate bill yesterday passes, cutting off funds to this group called ACORN. Now, we got that bill passed and we have the embarrassing video of ACORN staffers giving tax advice on how to set up a brothel with 13-year-old hookers. It has everything you could want – corruption and sleazy action at tax-funded organizations and it’s got government ties. But nobody’s covering that story. Why?

Gibson: HAHAHAHAHA. HEHEHE. I didn’t even know about it. Um. So, you’ve got me at a loss. I don’t know. Uh. Uh. But my goodness, if it’s got everything including sleaziness in it, we should talk about it this morning.

Roma: This is the American way!

Gibson: Or maybe this is just one you leave to the cables.

Roma: Well, I think this is a huge issue because there’s so much funding that goes into this organization…

This isn’t a story that the anchor of a major mainline media agency wants to cover; it is embarrassing to the Democrat Party, and it is a direct exposure to a president who was once a community organizer FOR ACORN. Better to just stay ignorant and hope it goes away than cover the story that a couple of kids have revealed that, in city after city, the ACORN that Obama worked for, the ACORN that has taken tens of millions of dollars in federal taxpayer money and is set to qualify for BILLIONS in stimulus money, the ACORN that conservatives have pointed out as a corrupt and immoral organization, is willing to help a pimp and his prostitute qualify on a house and cheat on their taxes so they can import more than a dozen illegal and underage El Salvadoran girls to set up a brothel. On tape and in glowing color for any who would just open their damn eyes to see.
In the same interview Gibson said that he was “purposely oblivious” to the huge Washington DC rally on September 12th.

The photo above is a view of part of the crowd of protesters who gathered in Washington, D.C. and around the country today to demand control of reckless runaway government spending and to voice their opposition to the government takeover of healthcare.

Police agencies estimates the crowd at 1.2 million. ABC News, however, reported this afternoon that the crowd was estimated at 2 million.

No matter which way you cut it, the size and scope of today’s citizen march on Washington is an historic, groundbreaking event. Ordinary citizens who have been called ‘the great silent majority’ normally do not protest…at least not in public. That day is long gone.

The outrage expressed by normal, everyday citizens from across the nation at the town hall meetings in August is a case in point. Never before in recent history or memory have citizens been so clearly, visibly–and audibly–enraged by the actions of their government.

For the sake of comparison, just imagine the famous One Million Man March – a march of one million black men that Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan organized and Barack Obama helped organize and attended. And imagine Charles Gibson as the anchor of ABC News saying he didn’t know anything about it. Oh, and suggesting that coverage of such an event was maybe something that only “the cables” should stoop to covering.

Imagine the outrage of this patent demonstration of bias, of this arrogant and demeaning attitude to a giant group of people representing an even more giant segment of the American population.

Just imagine the outrage. And this crowed was twice as large – and reflects a even LARGER movement that the mainstream media have ignored all along.

It’s not just Charles Gibson; in fact, he might even be one of the better representatives of the mainstream media. When Murphy said that “Beauty is only skin deep; ugly goes to the bone,” he might as well have been describing the media: Pretty people telling glossy stories based on a foundation of bias, dishonesty, corruption, and propaganda.

I earlier pointed out the flagrant and despicable bias of the Washington Post’s Keith Richburg and Salon’s Joe Conason in their horrendous commentary of the kids who revealed the total depravity of ACORN. The fact of the matter is that the corruption and criminal activity of ACORN has been ignored and covered-up by the media for years because they are the community organizing-arm of the Democrat Party. And Keith Richburg and Joe Conason might as well be the poster boys for the complete fraud that the media has become.

Throughout the entire election campaign, ACORN revealed itself as a criminal enterprise participating in voter fraud, embezzlement, and the worst forms of “community organization.” It was up to two kids to expose ACORN. The media would never have done it. And if the mainstream media have their way, they will help ACORN demonize and even criminalize these kids for exposing ACORN and exposing their own corruption and bias.

The documentation of the horrifying ACORN scandal has led Senate Democrats to vote 83-7 to defund ACORN to protect their own asses. Only a few radical leftists such as the Senator who was chosen to carry on Obama’s scandalous legacy in Illinois are left “voting for ACORN.” And the mainstream media are still deliberately slow to respond to the story.

As a conservative, I am deeply opposed to the agenda being advanced by the Democrat Party. And I believe they frequently lie and demagogue in order to advance that agenda. But as bad as the Democrats are, they don’t hold a candle to the dishonesty and the betrayal of the mainstream media. Unlike the political parties, the media have a constitutional duty to be objective and expose the truth – and they have deliberately chosen to pervert their profession into propaganda.

To hell with them. And I say that as someone who believes in the reality of an everlasting hell.

Sarah Palin is stupid. She is a self-gratifying narcissist, a terrible mother, a terrible governor, and a frankly demented human being.

And the very same people who are saying all that are simultaneously absolutely outraged that she is stepping down as governor. Apparently, the left wants stupid, self-gratifying, narcissistic, and demented people to stay in office. One can only conclude that if all politicians meeting the description that the left and the mainstream media assigned to Sarah Palin were to resign, there would be no more Democrats in office.

The left calls Sarah Palin “erratic,” “unhinged,” etc. etc. But they can’t stop talking about her – with “talking” being a polite euphemism for some of the most psychotic anger and fear that I have ever heard directed towards anyone in my life.

Not long after Sarah Palin was announced as John McCain’s running mate, the left launched absolutely vile attacks. The Daily Kos ran a story that maintained that Sarah Palin had faked the pregnancy that resulted in the birth of Trig Palin. The reason? To cover up for the fact that the baby was actually Bristol Palin’s, by way of an incestuous relationship with Sarah’s husband (and Bristol’s father) Todd Palin. Being the loathsome cowards and weasels of the left which they so ably exemplify, the Kos purged the article as the facts came out and they were revealed for the liars they truly are. And so the left introduced Sarah Palin to the world.

Stories ran in the mainstream media calling her a terrible mother who put her political career over the needs of her own children. One vicious personal attack after another, with no play considered out-of-bounds, and no media referee blowing the whistle to call a foul.

It’s been deleted, of course (again, the leftists being the genuine cowards that they are); but Heather Mallick wrote the following that was published on Canada’s CBC News under the title, “A Mighty Wind blows through Republican convention” from September 5, 2008. An excerpt:

John Doyle, the cleverest critic in Canada, comes right out and calls Palin an Alaska hillbilly. Damn his eyes, I wish I’d had the wit to come up with it first. It’s safer than “white trash” but I’ll pluck safety out of the nettle danger. Or something.

Doyle’s job includes watching a lot of reality television and he’s well-versed in the backstory. White trash — not trailer trash, that’s something different — is rural, loud, proudly unlettered (like Bush himself), suspicious of the urban, frankly disbelieving of the foreign, and a fan of the American cliché of authenticity. The semiotics are pure Palin: a sturdy body, clothes that are clinging yet boxy and a voice that could peel the plastic seal off your new microwave.

Palin has a toned-down version of the porn actress look favoured by this decade’s woman, the overtreated hair, puffy lips and permanently alarmed expression. Bristol has what is known in Britain as the look of the teen mum, the “pramface.” Husband Todd looks like a roughneck; Track, heading off to Iraq, appears terrified. They claim to be family obsessed while being studiously terrible at parenting. What normal father would want Levi “I’m a fuckin’ redneck” Johnson prodding his daughter?

So much for demonizing Sarah Palin – both as a woman and as a parent – merely for being attractive and growing up relatively poor. And of course, why not savagely launch into Sarah’s daughter Bristol why you’re at it?

Recently, of course, David Letterman felt free to tee off on Sarah’s 14 year old daughter Willow, suggesting that she was “knocked up” by a baseball player during the 7th inning stretch when Sarah attended a New York Yankee game with her youngest daughter. Letterman later issued a smarmy, self-serving “apology” for attacking a completely innocent young girl, but he felt no need to apologize for describing Sarah Palin as a “slutty flight attendant.” That’s just par for the course, after all. At least given the frankly demonic hostility of the mainstream media toward Sarah Palin.

As for Sarah’s infant son Trig, the left is unhinged with hatred toward him merely for the fact that his mother chose to allow him to live. Legal Insurrection has some “creative” liberal Photoshop examples of the utterly vile attacks on this innocent little baby boy.

After nearly a year – and eight full months after the November election – the left couldn’t stop their slimy, satanic, beyond-evil hatred for Sarah Palin and her young children. She was an attractive, well-spoken, self-made, independent woman who stood for family and for traditional values — and she therefore had to be destroyed at all costs.

And she was “erratic” and “unhinged” to want to get away from that daily hate festival? That is, of course, the opinion of the very sort of people who actively despised and tore down Sarah Palin from the outset.

Sarah Palin makes Mark Foley, the congressman who sent filthy emails to pages look almost normal. She makes David Vitter, the senator who was hanging out with hookers, look almost boring. She makes Larry Craig, caught hitting on a cop in a men’s room, look almost stable. She makes John Ensign, the senator who was having an affair with a staffer, look almost humdrum (and compared to the rest of the GOP whack-jobs, he is). And she makes Mark Sanford, the governor with the Latin lover, look positively predictable.

One of the most obvious things that Begala does is repeatedly compare Sarah Palin with warped sexual behavior. Notice that every single comparison he provides is precisely that. Why does he think Sarah deserves such rabidly sexualized comparisons? Has she had an affair that he can direct our attention to? Did she have sexual relations with prostitutes? Did she try to lure women in a public restroom for lesbian sex? Did she leave her state without leaving anyone in charge so she could fly to another country to be with her lover-not-her-husband?

Why is it deemed okay to attack this woman in this way? Even as the people engaging in such attacks claim that she, rather than they, are twisted and sick? Why are David Letterman, Heather Mallick, and Paul Begala able to continue to operate without being publicly destroyed for their despicable conduct?

The Huffington Post later took this down (again, the whole coward and weasel thing), but it was one of their own writers – Erik Sean Nelson – who wrote the piece:

In Sarah Palin’s resignation announcement she complained about the treatment of her son Trig who always teaches her life lessons. She said that the “world needs more Trigs, not fewer.” That’s a presidential campaign promise we can all get behind. She will be the first politician to actually try to increase the population of retarded people. To me, it’s kinda like saying the world needs more cancer patients because they teach us such personal lessons.

Her first act as President: To introduce a Pre-K lunch buffet that includes lead paint chips. Sort of a Large HEAD-START Program.

She will then encourage women to hold off on pregnancies until their 40’s just to mix up some chromosomes.

She now is in favor of abortion only in case of diploid birth.

Her policies will increase jobs because Wal-Mart is building new stores each day and someone has to be the greeter.

This will lead to smaller government because fewer Americans will have the cognitive ability to hold a government job.

Look, she says she’s resigning as governor because people are making attacks on her and Trig. If she ever did become president, all Osama bin Laden would have to do to defeat the United States is Photoshop a picture of Trig and she’d surrender the country that night. As she said, “That’s not politics as usual.” It isn’t. Politicians don’t usually quit for so stupid of reasons.

Just one more example of demonic attacks from demonic people. Huffington Post. Daily Kos. Well established liberal media outlets. The Democratic Party presidential candidates attended a major debate via the Daily Kos, while passing up an invitation from Fox News decrying the latter as unacceptable. We’re talking about the very core of the leftwing machine.

Why is it okay to attack Sarah Palin this way — not merely as a woman but as a mother? Why is it okay to attack her daughters and her infant child so hatefully and so horribly? What kind of ugly people are Democrats to have tolerated this, over and over and over again, for so long?

The left didn’t just attack Sarah Palin with shockingly distorted words and even more shockingly distorted images of her children. They attacked her in court, with one ginned-up lawsuit and ethics complaint after another. They declared total war upon her; and there was nothing that could potentially hurt her that they did not pursue.

And she’s “unhinged” for wanting to leave office so she can spare her state and her own family these extravagant costs – which came from bogus and frivolous charges that just kept coming one after the other?

First of all, they have created the narrative that her remarks were “rambling.”

Have you ever heard Barack Obama try to speak without his constant friend and companion, the Teleprompter of the United States of America? It would be a compliment to say that he rambles; the man is literally speaking in tongues. Sarah Palin had a few scripted lines, and frequently spoke “off the script” from her heart. Decent people would welcome such candid and non-telepromptered honesty. But the left appears to be devoid of decent people.

In their shockingly biased distortion of her resignation comments, the media describe her as having “portrayed herself as a victim.” Excuse me? “Portrayed herself as a victim“? Yeah, the way the women that Jack the Ripper butchered portrayed themselves as victims, I suppose. Anyone but the most pathologically demented fools have to realize that she didn’t “portray herself” as anything; she was repeatedly attacked in the most hateful, vicious, unhinged ways again and again and again. And it was obvious that they had absolutely no intention of stopping.

SEN. OBAMA: I will serve out my full six-year term. You know, Tim, if you get asked enough, sooner or later you get weary and you start looking for new ways of saying things, but my thinking has not changed.

MR. RUSSERT: But, but—so you will not run for president or vice president in 2008?

SEN. OBAMA: I will not.

And lets throw in Rahm Emanuel, Hillary Clinton, Janet Napolitano, and Kathleen Sabelius – the last two being governors of states – who abandoned their commitment to their states to fulfill their terms. Did they not have every bit as much of a duty to fulfill their terms as Sarah Palin had? Why is it that their departure – even when they outright lied as Barack Obama did – not matter, but Sarah Palin’s is some kind of personal betrayal?

The media are howling that Sarah Palin abandoned her state. But she is leaving it in the hands of an excellent governor who shares her views and her values. She is saving the state millions of dollars in continuing defense of frankly psychotic leftist legal harassment that has no other purpose than to intimidate and paralyze a sitting governor. She is freeing her state of the gridlock that has been erected for no other reason than to stifle and thwart any national ambitions she might have to the clear detriment of the state.

And it certainly proves the lie that Sarah Palin is some kind of power-hungry Lady MacBeth. Or, at least, I’d love to hear the argument that walking away from a governorship to an uncertain future is an evidence of “an insatiable hunger for power.”

It all boils down to this: Sarah Palin made a personal and professional decision that was most likely motivated primarily out of concern for her family and her family’s finances. Freed from her position as governor, Palin is freed from the constant legal attacks; she is able to write, give speeches, and even host a lucrative television program that will recoup the financial losses incurred by the psychotic leftist troll army.

Will it hurt her future political career? Who knows for certain that she even plans to have one? Would you, if you knew that you – and your family – would be subjected to the demonic left? Rather than run for the White House, she may choose instead to play the role of spokeswoman and king-maker, attempting to bolster support for conservative values and conservative candidates.

I hope he’s right, and the critics – who have ALWAYS been critics of Sarah Palin before there was anything to criticize – are wrong.

In the meantime, I will be wondering what would happen if the kind of attacks that were so routinely launched at Sarah Palin and her children were deemed appropriate by the mainstream media to be launched at Michelle Obama and her children.